Georgia was Georgia O'Keeffe's first name before she became widely known as an American modernist painter.
She was born Georgia Totto O'Keeffe on November 15, 1887, in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. Her middle name, Totto, came from her maternal grandfather, George Victor Totto, who was of Hungarian descent.
O'Keeffe used her family name throughout her professional life, including after her 1924 marriage to Alfred Stieglitz. She did not adopt a married surname, so her public identity remained Georgia O'Keeffe.
The name Georgia is sometimes confused with the name of the U.S. state, especially because O'Keeffe's best-known landscapes come from New Mexico rather than Georgia. Her name therefore identifies a person, not the southeastern American state. She became one of the most recognized figures in twentieth-century American art.